


I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas

by foxandbee



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Christmas!!!, Fluff, Getting Together, Photographer Zayn, Zayn is very melodramatic but pretends that he isn't, did I mention Christmas?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 07:23:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxandbee/pseuds/foxandbee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn is slowly but very, very surely losing the will to live.</p><p>And usually Zayn isn’t one for dramatics, but right now he wants nothing more than to impale himself on his own reindeer antlers. Half of his reasoning is the fact that <em>he is wearing reindeer antlers.</em></p><p>Or the one where Zayn is severely lacking in Christmas cheer, but then Niall comes along and just maybe changes all of that.</p><p>(Okay, I'm sorry, the summary sucks and the title has nothing to do with anything. Just read and be merry.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Christmas fic! Yaaaaaaaay! I've actually been struggling to get into the festive spirit this year, so I thought writing a Christmas story might help. I'm not sure if it's worked or if I'm just delirious.
> 
> The title has absolutely nothing to do with anything in this fic. It's just my favourite Christmas carol.
> 
> And I thought I might try my hand at writing Ziall because I freakin love Ziall.
> 
> Apart from that, I don't think I have anything else to say except MERRY CHRISTMAS!! Hope you all have a happy and safe holiday. :) xxx

Zayn is slowly but very, very surely losing the will to live.

And usually Zayn isn’t one for dramatics, but right now he wants nothing more than to impale himself on his own reindeer antlers. Half of his reasoning is the fact that _he is wearing reindeer antlers._

“Naomi, baby, look at the bubbles sweetheart. Look, look, look, they’re so pretty and shiny. Look up here!”

Yes, Naomi, please, _for the love of all that is holy_ , just look at the goddamn bubbles and smile because Zayn can’t take much more of Anna’s high-pitched baby babble.

Naomi doesn’t look. She doesn’t smile. She continues to sit on a strange man’s lap and scream her little lungs out while fat tears roll down her chubby cheeks. Then Anna pulls out the squeaking stuffed penguin and Zayn has to hold himself back from curling up next to Naomi and crying into Santa’s beard too.

 _Christ_ Zayn needs a cigarette.

Unfortunately he doesn’t have a break for at least another three hours. Maybe he can somehow rig the six-foot snow globe to topple over just as he’s walking past and crush him to death. That way his mum can sue the department store for negligence and wring some money from Zayn’s mangled remains. Now there’s a plan.

“Just keep taking the photos, I’m sure she’ll calm down soon,” Naomi’s mother says to Zayn with an absent wave of her hand, eyes never leaving her phone. Zayn grits his teeth and ducks back down to peer through the viewfinder, but on the inside he’s screaming. Tiny, imaginary Zayn screams at this woman until his face matches the bright red polo he’s wearing, and then proceeds to bash his head repeatedly into a tiny, imaginary wall. Then he takes off his tiny, imaginary reindeer antlers and tries to put himself out of his misery. They snap in two against his tiny, imaginary chest. Stupid plastic crap.

Because the thing is, the chances of this poor little girl calming down are slim to none. The general rule of thumb is that the first photo is always going to be the best photo. It’s when the child hasn’t had enough time yet to register the fact that the person holding them isn’t mummy or daddy, but rather a completely foreign old dude with the majority of his face covered in conspicuously fake hair. Once the kids figure out that, oh hang on a minute, I’m completely fucking terrified right now, there’s only about a 2% chance of getting an even semi-decent photo of them. It’s at this point that most parents should just give up and accept defeat. It’s also at this point that most parents do the exact opposite and cling to the vain hope that their child will suddenly and miraculously behave themselves.

Zayn’s been working this job for three weeks now and he’s yet to see that happen.

It’s on days like these when Zayn starts to seriously question his life choices. At the beginning of November, when he first applied, he thought he’d struck gold. A well paying job that was out of the cold and required no manual labour or cleaning up after other people. And all he had to do was take photos of kids with Santa. Zayn didn’t exactly need the work but a little extra cash never goes astray, especially over the party season. So Zayn thought, why not?

Now Zayn knows why not. Right now Zayn is acutely aware of the many, many reasons why not. On the 1st of December Zayn realised that he’d made a dreadful, awful, horrible mistake. And every single day since then he’s gone home with aching feet and ringing ears and a throbbing head.

The past three weeks have taught Zayn a multitude of important life lessons. Number one: children only have two volume settings, loud or fighter jet roaring through the night. Number two: Zayn hates Bing Crosby with a burning passion. Number three: there are an alarming number of cougars in this city. And number four: most parents are worse than their children.

And it just becomes more harrowing with every day that passes, as the closer it gets to Christmas, the more frazzled parents with squealing toddlers descend upon Zayn. Today is no exception.

Actually scratch that. Today _is_ an exception. Today is made exponentially more horrendous by the fact that Santa keeps not so subtly hitting on Zayn. As Zayn had escorted Santa from his changing room to the North Pole that morning, Santa had put a heavy hand on the small of Zayn’s back and whispered to him that if he was a very naughty boy he’d get the chance to sit on Santa’s lap.

Zayn was so scandalised that he walked straight into a life-sized Nutcracker.

And ever since then Zayn has felt Santa’s gaze burning a hole through his hideous polyester dress pants. He can’t even threaten to crush Santa’s nuts with his bare hands because Anna says that’s an inappropriate thing to say with impressionable mini-humans within earshot.

Finally Naomi’s mother has had enough and plucks her distraught daughter from Santa’s clutches. Zayn breathes a sigh of relief and then groans audibly when he looks over at the line of people snaking across the tiled floor of the store, curving all the way out the door. Anna shoots him a warning look, Santa shoots him a wink, and Zayn just wants to shoot himself.

At around 2 o’clock the steady flow of tears and drool and wailing begins to peter out. _Thank sweet baby Jesus for nap-time._

When Zayn, Anna and Pervy Santa are the only people left, Anna gives him permission to duck out for a much needed toilet break. In the bathroom Zayn goes about his business and then stares hard at himself in the mirror, trying to will himself back in time. He’s planning to travel back to the day of the job interview, flush his alarm clock down the toilet and then chain smoke himself into an early grave. After 5 minutes of glaring at his reflection all Zayn has achieved is the start of a new headache pulsing in his right temple. He rests his forehead against the cool glass and closes his eyes.

And that’s it. It’s gone. Zayn’s will to live has vanished completely.

“Um, are you alright there, mate?”

Zayn cracks one eye open to search for the source of the voice. Then he promptly returns to his face-smushing position with a moan.

“I’m going to take that as a no.”

Zayn must have seriously pissed someone off in a previous life. That can be the only explanation for why the prettiest boy Zayn has ever seen just walked into the bathroom while he was in the middle of a mental breakdown.

“ ‘M fine. Just ignore me,” Zayn mumbles into the mirror.

“No can do, mate. I get the impression that if I leave now you might try to drown yourself in the basin. And I can’t be responsible for the death of an elf at Christmas time.”

“ ‘M not an elf.”

“What?”

Zayn shuffles around so he’s facing the boy and leaning sideways against the mirror. The boy looks like he’s caught halfway between amused and concerned, probably by the fact that Zayn didn’t deny the basin comment. And now that he thinks about it, that’s probably the best plan he’s heard all day. Much less work than trying to make a giant snow globe fall on top of him.

“I’m not an elf,” Zayn repeats, gesturing towards his antlers.

The boy’s blue eyes flick up over Zayn’s head and then he grins. And Zayn feels his knees turn slightly wobbly. Because this boy can light up a room like fresh snowflakes, pale and perfect and sparkling.

“I see,” the boy says, and Zayn can hear the laughter lilting through his Irish accent. “I didn’t even notice those before you pointed them out.”

 _Brilliant._ How many ways can Zayn embarrass himself in the span of three minutes?

“Yeah, well,” Zayn sighs, “I should probably be getting back out there. Spread Christmas cheer and all that.”

The boy arches an eyebrow. Zayn tries his best to ignore it.

“But thank you. For checking on me. And for the sink idea, that’s a good one, I might use it.”

The boy gives an alarmed start and his smirk slides right off. His eyes go very wide and his mouth pops open into a little ‘o’.

Zayn breaks into a genuine smile for the first time all day.

“It’s a joke, man,” Zayn laughs, clapping the boy on the shoulder as he moves past him to the door. “No need to have kittens.”

Zayn’s halfway back to Winter Wonderland when he notices that there’s a body following closely behind him. He glances back over his shoulder and then stops suddenly in his tracks. His antlers sway precariously on his head and he has to reach up to steady them.

“Just making sure you don’t try and hang yourself from a Christmas tree,” the boy explains, shoving his hands in the pockets of his pale blue jeans.

“Right, yeah. ‘S probably for the best.”

The boy falls into step next to him and together they walk back to the Santa Set. Anna is talking to a young couple with a baby boy and Zayn studiously avoids eye contact. He’s never been great with a sales pitch, probably because he can’t be bothered trying to convince people to buy shit they don’t need. Zayn goes straight for the camera and the boy trails after him. He takes a few quick test shots, because some snobby woman complained her photo was overexposed (and really, they’re in a fucking department store, the lighting never changes and Zayn knows his way around a flash. The only thing _overexposed_ was that woman’s cleavage), and Santa is caught on screen scratching his balls.

“You take the photos?” the boy pipes up.

“Yep.”

“That’s so cool. I thought you were just one of Santa’s little helpers.”

Zayn narrows his eyes and the boy gives him a cheeky smile. He’s got a dimple in his chin that Zayn desperately wants to lick.

“So is it hard?”

“Nah, not really.” Zayn fiddles with the zoom and attempts to keep his tongue securely inside his mouth. “I work as a freelance photographer, so this is all pretty standard stuff.”

The boy sidles up next to him and reaches for the shutter. Zayn immediately slaps his hand away. Then he starts panicking because he just assaulted a customer and he’s going to be fired and sued and thrown in the slammer and he’s most definitely going to become someone’s bitch, _oh god._

But the boy just grins and picks up a display key ring.

“Sounds sick. What do you normally take photos of?”

“Anything but crying children.”

The boy snorts at that. “Why am I getting the feeling that you don’t enjoy your job?”

“What gave me away?” Zayn fires back with his own wry smile.

“Don’t like kids?”

“Are we conversing in questions only?”

The boy smacks him with a promotional flyer and Zayn ain’t even mad.

“It’s not so much the children themselves as it is the kicking and screaming and general tantrum throwing. Also, the drool and snot and tears. I don’t do well with bodily fluids.”

“Well that’s a shame,” the boy mutters.

Zayn snaps his head up from checking the CD burner. “What?”

“Hmm? Nothing. Please continue.” The boy blinks owlishly at Zayn, blonde halo and big eyes making him look so fucking innocent. Zayn wants to take him home and place him at the top of the Christmas tree. If he had a Christmas tree. Bah humbug.

“So no, it’s not that I don’t like kids. I don’t really like their parents though.”

“You don’t like their parents? What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, 70% of the kids that come through here don’t actually _want_ their photos taken with Santa. A lot of them are really fucking terrified. And I don’t blame them. If I was 5 years old and my mum dumped me with same random, fat stranger I’d be screaming too.”

“That’s true,” the boy concedes.

“And most of the parents just laugh it off, like oh their kids are just being silly and cute, when really most of them are genuinely frightened. And for what? For some average quality photo that they’ll just fob off on their relatives. And then they’ll do it all again next year.”

“But it’s a memory,” the boy points out.

“A memory of what? Of public humiliation?” Zayn gestures over to the young couple who are now trying to situate their son on Santa’s lap. The poor kid is already giving the crazy eyes, the eyes that say _I’m about to lose my shit and it won’t be pretty._ “Take this couple for example. I’ll bet my paycheck that that little boy is no more than one year old. So what’s in it for him? He can’t tell Santa what he wants for Christmas. He can’t promise Santa that he’ll be good and listen to mum and eat his vegetables. The poor thing’s just going to be traumatised, all so his parents have an excuse to shove a photo in their friends’ faces and say, here, look at my baby. It’s sick, I’m telling you.”

By the time Zayn has finished his unplanned and probably entirely unnecessary rant the boy is considering him with his head cocked to the side. Those blue eyes are piercing and Zayn feels like he’s being X-rayed. He feels like this boy that he met 20 minutes ago can see through everything, can see right down to his bones and can see where they’re brittle and cracked in places.

“That’s one way of looking at it,” he agrees with a slow nod.

Zayn has to ask, even though he knows he might not like the answer.

“What’s another way?”

The boy watches the young family just as carefully as he watched Zayn, the ghost of a smile on his pink lips.

“I think you’re right, that the boy can’t be more than one. So that makes it his first Christmas. And it’s probably the first big holiday they’re going to experience as a family. And they’ll probably put this photo in his baby book and look back on it in 20 years time, bring it out at his 21st birthday. Maybe they will come back next year. Maybe they’ll come back every year and it’ll become a treasured Christmas tradition, a photographic timeline of how their love can build a whole family. And yeah, he’ll probably get scared. But that just means that when another little one comes along he can hold their hand and tell them it’s alright and be a big brother. So yeah, it’s a memory of the past, but in a way it’s also a hope for the future.”

The boy turns back to Zayn.

“Which is really what Christmas is all about, isn’t it?”

Zayn is frozen with one hand on the camera and his mouth gaping unattractively. This boy just absolutely floored him while standing in the middle of a department store with Mariah Carey warbling in the background. He doesn’t even know the guy’s name.

“Niall, come get in the photo with your nephew!”

_Oh for the love of Mrs. Claus’ saggy tits._

The boy, Niall, ambles over in front of the camera and swoops in to pick up his nephew, lifting him up into the air and blowing a raspberry into his little tummy. Then he settles down next to Santa with the baby positively glowing in his lap. Mum and Dad crowd in too and Zayn snaps the happiest Christmas photo he’s ever taken. There’s no crying or screaming. There’s nothing but warmth and love and hope.

Zayn busies himself with the memory card until he’s sure Niall has left the store.

That night he goes home and puts up a Christmas tree. The angel on top is blonde.

The next day Zayn is back to contemplating his demise, wondering if it would be possible to accidentally-on-purpose electrocute himself.

When he comes back from his usual 2 o’clock toilet break he finds Niall once again fiddling with the promotional posters, this time joined by another insanely pretty boy and about 18 young girls. Or maybe there’s only four. Zayn can’t tell, they keep _moving_ and shit.

He’s spotted before he can dive behind a nearby sleigh.

“Hey Zayn!” Niall’s grinning at him all cheeky again.

“How did you – ”

“You’re wearing a name tag.”

“Oh, right.” Definitely going to electrocute himself.

“So _this_ is the inhumanly good looking reindeer Grinch that Niall won’t shut up about. I can see it, I can totally see it,” pretty boy number two butts in.

“Louis. Don’t you have sisters to be organising?” Niall says through clenched teeth.

“True!” Louis spins on his heel and claps his hands together. “Minions! Assemble in formation!”

Zayn moves to the camera, checking all the knobs and levers without even having to think about it. “So I’m the Grinch, huh?”

“No! No, I don’t think you’re the Grinch.”

Zayn looks back up at Niall and raises a single brow. Niall pinks up right to the tips of his ears and shuffles his feet.

“Well, maybe you’re lacking a little in the festive spirit department.”

Zayn snorts.

“But, um, I was thinking that, er, maybe I could help you with that?”

Zayn stills his hands. “Help me how?”

Niall turns even pinker, but his cheeky smile is making a comeback. “Well, I firmly believe that happiness begins in the stomach and spreads outwards. And I also know for a fact that Starbucks have some amazing Gingerbread lattes.”

“Well. I do like coffee.”

Niall beams and Zayn thinks of Christmas morning and wrapped presents and little kids in snow boots.

Later that evening Zayn doesn’t go home with aching feet and ringing ears and a throbbing head.

He goes to Starbucks with aching feet and ringing ears and a throbbing head. But while he may be sore and exhausted, he’s also warm and full and content, sitting with a pretty blonde boy in a coffee shop.

Their peace is momentarily ruined when three boys run through and pelt Niall and Zayn with mistletoe, and Zayn has a sneaking suspicion that one of them may have been Louis.

Then suddenly Zayn doesn’t care who just assaulted them with floral arrangements because Niall’s soft, pink, ginger spiced lips are pressing up against his own.

And Zayn is slowly but surely regaining the will to live.

Although he isn’t one for dramatics.


End file.
